Is Chinese-Made Laminate Flooring Safe?

Tests in California find high levels of formaldehyde in laminate flooring sold by Lumber Liquidators, 60 Minutes reports

Suspect flooring sold by Lumber Liquidators. A news report claims Chinese-made laminate flooring sold in California contained formaldehyde levels six or seven times higher than allowed by state regulations.
Image Credits: Dwight Burdette/Wikimedia Commons

More Green Building News

A report by the television news program 60 Minutes claims samples of Chinese-made laminate flooring sold by Lumber Liquidators contained six or seven times as much formaldehyde as permitted by California regulations and may pose a health threat to unsuspecting homeowners.

Cooper said that Lumber Liquidators, a national chain with more than 360 stores in 46 states, sells 100 million square feet of laminate flooring a year, much of it made in China.

The flooring, “as we discovered during our investigation,” he said, “may fail to meet health and safety standards because it contains high levels of formaldehyde, a known cancer causing chemical.”

The company says that its flooring is safe, he adds, “but it doesn’t appear that way.”

Samples purchased and tested by outside labs

Anderson spoke with Denny Larson, identified as the executive director of a nonprofit called Global Community Monitor. Larson said that he and environmental attorney Richard Drury bought 150 boxes of laminate flooring around the state and had them tested by three labs.

“The results? While laminate flooring from Home Depot and Lowe’s had acceptable levels of formaldehyde, as did Lumber Liquidators American-made laminates, every single sample of Chinese-made laminate flooring from Lumber Liquidators failed to meet California formaldehyde emissions standards,” the report said. “Many by a large margin.”

On average, the flooring samples from Lumber Liquidators outlets had six or seven times as much formaldehyde as state standards allowed, but some showed levels 20 times as high as permitted. One of the labs, Drury said, was so startled by the results that technicians “thought their machine was broken.”

“We sent the samples for testing at two certified labs,” he said. “It turns out of the 31 samples of Chinese-made laminate flooring, only one was compliant with formaldehyde emissions standards. Some were more than 13x over the California limit. Both labs told us they had never seen formaldehyde levels that high.

“But when we took those test results to Lumber Liquidators’ founder and chairman Tom Sullivan, he refused to accept the methodology as valid and points out the company is not required by law to test their finished products like we did.”

When interviewed, Sullivan said the lab tests were “not a real world test of the laminate,” and said the tests were originally prompted by a group of lawyers who are suing the company and short-selling the stock (that is, betting the stock’s value will decline).

The company’s stock rose from $13 a share in 2011 to $119 a share two years later as profit margins doubled, the report said, leading one hedge fund manager 60 Minutes interviewed to suspect it might be breaking the law. Whitney Tilson told Cooper he had been tipped that Lumber Liquidators was buying formaldehyde tainted flooring in China because it was cheaper and allowed a fatter profit margin.

6 Comments

It's worse
Apparently, laws are being broken long before the wood gets to these formaldehyde factories. As if it isn't bad enough to buy flooring with dangerous levels of a known carcinogen, the wood is also unsustainably harvested AND stolen.

There are some tips in the documentary on how to avoid stolen timber at the retail level, but it is not clear to me if there is a definitive source. Obviously, we avoid the above mentioned company, but the documentary indicates there are likely more. When you see the video, and the volume of wood we're talking about, your jaw will drop.

EDIT: Above link was for the promo before it aired. Here is the full piece.

Chinese products
Somewhere in Florida, there is probably a house that has Chinese laminate flooring as well as Chinese drywall. Let's just hope that the owners didn't buy Chinese dog food for their collie and Chinese baby formula for their infant.

Laminate
None of the stories that I have read have mentioned the engineered wood product from LL. Does anyone have any thoughts on if these products are an issue? It seems to me that the engineered wood would also require an adhesive to bond the wood veneer to the .. bottom part of the plank.

It's just soooo 19th century
This is what happens with race to the bottom consumer pricing and an industrial regime that obliges those demands. Tom Sullivan's protestations over methodology did provide a bit of amusement though.

Lumber Liquidators, under investigation for selling Chinese-made laminate flooring with excessive levels of formaldehyde, is busy buffing its environmental image. The company announced that it has opened a retail outlet…